Scopus Author Identifiers are system generated: if you have an article indexed in Scopus, you will have an ID.
However, this means that you may have more than one ID generated if you have published with variant names and affiliations (e.g. Clarke, G and Clarke, GC).
Find yourself in Scopus by using the Author search option. Enter your surname and initials. If you find you have more than one ID and profile you can ask Scopus to merge them (See box below). Some researchers have 3 or even 4 profiles that have to be merged, depending on names they have used on their publications and their affiliations.
It is worth making sure that all your references that appear in Scopus are really yours and not someone else with a similar name. The Author ID profile allows you to correct errors in Scopus, thus making the database a more accurate way of finding your articles and getting more accurate metrics on your publications.
Scopus uses a sophisticated algorithm which recognizes authors based on various data elements associated with the article, including affiliation, publication history, subject area and co-authors.
More information on the algorithm used by Scopus can be found in the Scopus Author Identifier FAQs.
Scopus Author Identifier helps to solve one of the biggest problems associated with author searching – how do you distinguish between articles belonging to authors with similar names, when the name is recorded in several different ways, or when the name contains unusual characters such as accents.
Many authors share the same name and the Author Identifier distinguishes between these author names, it gives each author a separate ID and groups together all the documents written by that author. This feature is especially useful for distinguishing between authors who share very common names like Smith or Wang or Lee.
Additionally author names in Scopus can vary in the way they are formatted, for example, the same author could appear in one document as Lewis, M; in another as Lewis, M.J; and another as Lewis, Michael. The Author Identifier matches the documents of this author and groups these name variants together so that one author is identified with their specific papers.
Scopus can integrate with ORCID iD.
Simply click on the link ‘Add your papers to ORCID’ link on the Document Search Page in Scopus, and you will be redirected to the ORCID website where you can either register for an ORCID iD or sign in. Once there, you can link your Scopus Author Identifier and publications to your ORCID iD.
Further information on setting up an ORCID iD through your Scopus ID can be found here.
Note: this process will also alert Scopus as to whether you have multiple Scopus Author Identifiers that need to be merged.
This is a short tutorial introduction to the Scopus author identifier. This tool matches all the work of an author to a unique author details page regardless of name variations of that particular author.
The way that Scopus automatically generates Scopus Author Identifiers and links to your previous work can sometimes pose problems for analysis of citation metrics on your publications if they are spread over several different identifiers. Each author identifier will not give the complete picture of your body of work.
If your publications in Scopus are spread over several different Scopus Author IDs, you can use the ‘Request to merge authors’ form. More instructions for this can be found here.
Likewise, if a publication that isn't yours is attributed to your Scopus Author ID, you can us the "Request to remove documents from author" form.